three sixty five

one last time from two thousand ten
we walk out to the bend
looking down far below
so many miles in these three sixty five

the journey that looms
the sights unseen
hoping for sunrays and peace
wonder how many miles in the next three sixty five

miles and milestones

This morning the dashboard of my car moved to a new thousand. I have always, curiously, tried to watch the change of each thousand. So as I noted this new thousand, it got me thinking of how every few thousand life seems to change.

While the miles get burned on the day to day office & home route; in the hindsight the figurative distance covered in those to and fro miles is quite phenomenal.

First few thousands, they remind,

Of a young man uuntouched by cynicism,

in a hurry to chase unfounded dreams,

un-scared and unscathed by the unknown roads

Next few thousands spent with un-ease,

un-willing companions on the way,

a little fearful, a little lost,

longing for open highways, stuck in jams

right through the dust of jagged dirt roads,
on to the freedom roads of soul,

wizened by age and the thousands past,

just cruising onto horizons unseen

this thousand past and all I want

is a long open road,

many more thousands I wish to burn

and all I need is the company of me.

Part II- Blue nights of the stranger kind

Awakening with a start, I found myself quite lost and confounded, in the few long seconds it takes to awaken after waking up, the only echo, faint but distinct, in my head were the mystery words of the alm seeking horse; 'you are but not the first and you shall not be the last'.

As the clearing of senses pushed out the whispering echo, the predicament I faced became quite apparent, on my way to wonder land of sun and blue skies I had only managed to crash land into a land erily devoid of all I seeked, bathed in a strange greyish blue color now, trust this was day time.

How do you define the quandary of a man, who is equipped with an optimist mind, plagued with a pessimist heart and absolutely clueless soul? As I stood in this strange quandary, oscillating between thoughts of 'yeah lets get out of here', 'so this is what I get for what I dreamed' and 'maybe this is my true destination lets explore it'; knowing full well the origins of each strain, I waited for one of the three to wrestle out the others and give me a clear action item, like plan and action it, just despair and sulk, or be at peace and explore.

watching from afar

Sky was a strange amalgamation of fiery red interspersed with shades of blue and white. The wind it seemed to be picking up from where it left the leaves dancing and was bringing in a certain moist freshness, wafting through the wide expanses around.
The yellow flower on the bush and its almost hundred cousins lost in a world of their own, the golden yellow grasslands dancing to a tune getting played only in their ears and amidst this all with twinkling eyes and springing steps, a small boy strangely alone and unrestrained, seemed to be industriously occupied with a few disparate items doubling up as his toys.

His hope filled eyes every now and then glancing to the sinking ball in the sky, as if seeking a constant reconfirmation for some time still left to play. Kings and queens, wars and wins were running through the funny little game he had chosen to play, the innocence of an unscathed mind churning tales of joy and unabashed hope.
Unmindful, unperturbed by the closing darkness, soaking in the precious moments of joy , just so very lost in those moments.

a faraway land of endless games

of honey dripping fruits and wild flower smells

a nameless land of unspoilt youth

of endless spring days and innocent dreams

a wonder land of hope and succour

of guileless loves and unshackled hearts

Hand-to-heart, I am just a rhyme-less crash-landed-before take-off poet.

Sometimes I scribble, on a piece of paper or a notepad, some random thoughts, on the way I see perceive and react to life, my dreams and my realities, reflections on the days gone by & the life to come, of the people I meet and those I left behind, that's where this blog basically comes from.

I have a day job that doesn't give me long nights;  un-pretentious and honest people attract me like magnets; I am a one recipe for all cook who thrives on self praise; sometimes I get all tongue tied, which means either I almost love you or I find it disdainful to even talk to you; I have often caught myself saying 'awesome' when faced with a mirror; the one female who has ever loved me back is my car; I can be uncouth and smooth, awkward and at ease, sometimes even simultaneously; I laugh at myself; I strongly relate to Hesse's Siddhartha and his quest; and yes I don't take anything I say seriously, I have seen too many of my opinions change.

a note to july

My brain is clogged like a drain, the malarial parasite seems to have left some lingering after effects. In the month of july I seem to have crossed quite a milestone in life, not to mention a kind of deliverance.

Despite the long looking forward for the said event, the wistful and wishful thinking about how it would feel and how I would express my feelings to myself and to the world in general, the damn mosquito put paid to any immediate honest reactions getting recorded at all.

It is strange how routinely our relationships die and stranger how we sometimes carry the cross of there cadavers,long and far on this road of life. How we often in darker moods then tend to disect these cadavers, vandalize them, how we try to resurrect them in our minds to understand when and what brought the grim reaper of death. How we haul them around , sometimes as if by a morbid choice of our own and sometimes because of the morbid compulsions of life.When all we should be doing is walking on; letting the cadaver be right there at that crossroad, where it dropped dead, left to its own device to turn to dust.

I for one, in the past, have been often guilty of having hauled these remnants of some superficial and transient relationships  way past their expiry dates , on occasions because I am basically a dumb guy and this time because life made me drag it for quite some time.

Finally after a long, winding, treacherous and in a few ways a coming of age journey, this July, this cadaver too turned to dust and melted forever into the winds of time.Whew!

A bookmark:2.7.10

lest we forget our travails

a May gone by and so many may be's

 Yeah a lot of may be's this may, oh my shining bright sunny may, may you keep coming every month!

remember when the music

Hard to describe the feelings that wash over when ever this song plays, an upbeat pathos for youthful lost dreams, nostalgic reminiscences of a life gone by, a knowing nod to all that was right and got lost along the way and most importantly an undying zest to keep re-starting life.

This is outstandingly poetic, Harry Chapin, hats off to you.

Remember when the music

Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire
And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire,
For we believed in things, and so we'd sing.



oh all the times I've listened, and all the times I've heard

All the melodies I'm missing, and all the magic words,
And all those potent voices, and the choices we had then,
How I'd love to find we had that kind of choice again.


Remember when the music
Was a glow on the horizon of every newborn day
And as we sang, the sun came up to chase the dark away,
And life was good, for we knew we could.


Remember when the music
Brought the night across the valley as the day went down
And as we'd hum the melody, we'd be safe inside the sound,
And so we'd sleep, we had dreams to keep.

And I feel that something's coming, and it's not just the wind.
It's more than just tomorrow, it's more than where we've been,
It offers me a promise, it's telling me "Begin",
I know we're needing something worth believing in.

two weeks of the fallen

Anger,realization and rejection , thats a days worth of life.

The question remains, if life we live is governed only by what is pre-ordained?

Apparently yes, if I observe empirically.

All i want to state for the record is my rejection of it, a complete utter rejection of everything we don't or can't govern! Thanks for this reminder life.

Everyone's Fool

Everyone's fool, that's what I am.

This is just a bookmark to remind, someday I will chance over it again, like a long forgotten dried flower in the pages of a once favorite book, and we shall stroll these very streets of the past, wistful and lost, wondering all over again.

One amongst fifty two, only on a calendar

another day in the week,waking up with dream filled eyes,

trudging through the cacophonus streets, under sun drenched skies;

still a spring in the step and a twinkle in my eye,

making my way to my mystery lane;

my heart's a flutter like never before,

but a boundless peace in my mystery lane;

ocean deep eyes and a heart warming smile,

an uncommon charm in my mystery lane;

stealing and stealing , a million glances,

playful tides of childish joy,

my soul's adrift on her wandering waves;

endless stream of things to say,

but sitting tongue tied in my mystery lane;

A faraway bell tolls across the grasslands,  as a sliver of ray shines through the clouds overhead.
Delightful.

life in my years

While going through one of the tons of forwards, some people have made it a habit to send and fewer some like me, a habit to read, I came across tucked in the corner of an other wise unrelated email containing photographs of dogs (literally), a line that read ' its not the years in your life, but the life in your years that counts'. Though to be honest I have kind of heard/read this one many times before in passing, but never before did it get me thinking.

Into the thirtieth year of my existence, I have often wondered if the shameless pilfering of days into nights and nights into day, over and over again, leaving behind nothing more than only a number, number of years, in its wake, was a reflection on the moribund meaninglessness of human existense and if the almighty ever wanted us to live the way we have chosen to.

But this time, I found myself asking if it was true, actually true, that life is actually meant to be just this, this routine of being born, being pampered, playing around, learning to walk, speak, learning to cohabitate with humans in a society, conforming to the norms of life as we see around us and then finally passing on to another world of oblivion. If this was what life was supposed to be and if this was the objective of human existense, then what have I done in my thirty? Hand to heart, crossing sixty might turn out to be pipe dream for my body what with the lifestyle, so having gone through half of my probable existence already, what has been the 'life in my years'?

The strange vacousness with which my mind and heart stared back at this question reflects the singular lack of anything that could be pointed out as life in my years. Not convinced however, I sat back to gently waft through the dump of my almost thirty, to find out some traces of life in those years.

A certain few moments of life flashed through my eyes, the one hour spent on a rainy sunday sitting on the road side parapet at that deserted serpentine hill road, observing and contemplating the vast green expanse of the valley below. Being lost in a foreign land at night, deserted darkened streets and signages in a language I could'nt read, almost sure of not being able to make it to my room, but feeling liberated, calm and at peace all at once.

And a few more came to mind, but the moot point of having led a life, which when looked back upon hardly seems to have had any life in it really makes me poignant, though I can't claim to be surprised either, 'cause I have always been acutely aware of my lust and ambition for material growth, but did I somewhere along these roads, chasing the self set goals of being something or someone, forgot to stand back, to reflect and wonder if down these roads I was running blind,  tucked somewhere at the end would be my soul's contentment.

I keep encountering this question every now and then, what really is this contentment I seek, am I living a life that will eventually lead to it? While I know that my pursuance and need for material things has subsided slowly over the years, but what next? Where is that road to contentment, in this maze like life, so many roads diverge from every corner, is there amongst these the one I seek? I want to understand and listen to my soul, has it still got something to say or are its voices smothered forever?

Someday I need to figure that road out, a way out of this maze, a way to my soul's contentment, a way on which, when I see somewhere ' its not the years in my life, but the life in it', I would peek inside and find myself smiling.

Part I: Blue nights of the stranger kind

apr'10: no time to post these days

Walking around the garden of eden, I fell straight into a deep dark hole promising to be a window to the ether filled eternities of the sky, in a strange display of coquetishness my heart brimmed over with the thrill of the other side, the unseen possibilities of youthful escapades under golden yellow skies.

Like many transformational experiences where our surroundings happen to dampen, sudden and without warning, the hormone driven gallavanting of our infantile hearts, the coquetishness gave way to cynicism as I emerged from the hole into a seriously color challenged surrounding. The blackish blue dark sky, connived to turn the otherwise green of leaves into a pastal hue somewhere around the greenish grey black of an underwater moss.

A look at my hand revealed that my skin too had turned into that brackish blue shade, though strangely the dull yellow of the teeth was now like the stark and shining silver.

As I stood wondering on the sudden transmorgification of my physical and emotional faculties, a distant silhoute of a breying horse, only just visible, even though stalking quite close to where I stood, came into my view. The horse looked deep into my eyes and was able to convey sarcasm and remorse intersperded with a cynical pleasure, all in one look of the eye. Being a man who almost always struggles to convey any one single expression through eyes, the horses ability to convey so many conflicting emotions in a glance was intriguing. So as I stood intrigued and kind of piqued at this strange creature there came a flash of lightning from the skies. Distracted momentarily from my horse staring I saw that the horse was wearing boxer shorts but the chap dint have enough dough to manage a tee shirt and there he stood with a bowl for alms in his left hand, trying to paw me out of my reverie with his right.

Instinctively my hand plunged into the pocket of my pant, dished out a piece of metal and deposited it into the begging horse's bowl. As I began to ask myself if a penny would be any bit worthwhile for the horse and also why I could'nt keep some grass in my pocket for meeting the unforeseen eventuality of meeting beggar herbivores, the horse cut short my reasoning by grinning at me. The grin seemed to communicate a wry sense of humor, bordering on the derisive, again leaving me suitably impressed with the expressive faculty of the myriad small parts of this horse's face.

It was then that I heard the horse say, 'you are but not the first and you shall not be the last', and then it galloped off at the speed of sound. Needless to say,the subtelty of his speech and the miserliness of his words, convinced me of the obstruse criticality of the utterance.Being a verbose albiet ineffective conversationalist this skill of the horse somehow made the small heart sulking below the left pocket of my shirt grow even more smaller.

Lost and watching the wrestling grey cells in my head, desperate to interpret the horse's whisper, With trepidation I walked a few steps, perhaps still hoping unconciously to encounter the promised sun, even as a sudden lethargy swept upwards through my legs and I began to sense sleep like an injected drug slowly flowing through my viens. I dropped my hindsight onto a small brackish damp rock and cuddled into the laps of deep slumber.

a journey of dreams

its six o clock and i am dreaming

this lonesome ride in an empty coach and i am dreaming

 flying trees under greying skies and i am dreaming

the sullen rattle of the train on stones and i am dreaming

the last yawn of the fading sun and i am dreaming

dreaming beyond the vast empty spaces of life

 of crystal blue skies over the endless greens

dreaming of some unseen honey love eyes

of a mystic touch under the open skies

flocks of birds heading for a faraway home and i am dreaming

a vagabond stream in this middle of nowhere and i am dreaming

a few slivers of shine and i am dreaming

dreaming of some destinations overshot

places all I chose not to stop

dreaming of the tracks that diverged

dreaming of  places they could have led

this subtle chill in the gushing wind and  i am dreaming

holding myself a little tighter, i am dreaming

this barren stare of empty lands and i am dreaming

far & few sprouts of green, i am dreaming

dreaming of the promised land,  the reason at the end of it all

dreaming of a satiated soul , rising phoenix past this long night of coal

some new eyes across the aisle, a little glance and i am dreaming

this journey, this track, destination nowhere in my sight and i am dreaming

this scorching relentless must lead to somewhere, i am dreaming

where this journey shall end, i am dreaming

will there be the days of spring, of sun and green, i am dreaming
or will there be only cold claws of wind, i am dreaming

will the train be empty and destination deserted, i am dreaming
or will I find the twinkle of an eye, i am dreaming

the magic mirror

Once upon a time I was sitting on a chair in front of a mirror, trying to analyse how much and how bad did my paunch look to others observing me from a distance of around ten feet. Being a student of physics I positioned the said chair exactly five feet in front of the mirror, the thing about mirrors, I notice, is that sometimes they tend to paint rosy pictures of our countenance, especially so when I look into it without wearing my optical correction glasses.

So generally, as a habit, I have been trying to always view the mirror without wearing my glasses.

Another interesting observation has been that a mirror while letting you know how you appear to other people, remains absolutely silent and non judgemental about that appearance, this again is fortutious since it allows me to pass any favorable judgement that suits my needs.

Mirrors in my opinion are basically god's creations meant to assuage the feelings of depravity in his children, for giving them a canvas to paint whatever bright and beautiful image they wish to paint of themselves, without any botherations from a contrarian truth.


Infact if you wade even a little further into the matter, it is not hard to be confronted with the worlds heaviest spiritual non-discovery; that mirrors have been and continue to be the savior of mankind, they and their above elaborated unique skills have helped preserve life on this planet.

Your incredulity at this deduction, to me once again underlines the effectiveness of mirrors, since you have utilized the special non judgemental nature of mirrors to furtively skim over the fact that ever since you were born you have been an imbecile with very limited powers of deduction.

Mirrors have singlehandedly managed to counterbalance the inherent human trait of destroying or wanting to destroy all thats more beautiful than itself. Now if the mirrors had not provided this immense countervaling to this inherent human trait, we all would have looked into a mirror and tried to destroy by some means everything around us. Now if you did'nt get 'why destroy', you are such an imbecile that you owe your existence only to the healing powers of mirrors.

Without digressing further the whole point remains, save for the mirrors, the human race would have been on such a destruction spree that I doubt very much if world would have lasted this long for adam or manu's, whichever system of myth you follow, progeny to keep procreating generation on generation.

The same old question

I stumbled, crazed and desperate for years, seeking solace for a strangely disquiet heart. Soaked in the belief that someone, something or someplace is what it will take for these tides within to transmogrify into a serene, quiet and joyous lake in a perpetual spring.

Then as most things in life, that is without any credit to an evolved sense of understanding, infact purely by the virtue of ticking time, piling on of years and a lot of stick on the backside, did it dawn through the dense fogs of my dumbness; a simple, honest, yet profound realization that the happiness, peace & contentment I have been thirsting for, is only deep within my heart, I need to search for it & pursue it there 'cause only I can help myself be happy,only I can make myself feel treasured. Rest all is a lie.

Still, quite often I find myself cornered all over again and needing to remind myself of the hard learnt wisdom, to extricate myself from these corners.
The moot question that emerges and begs answering is of course, why?  Why do I find myself in these corners time and again? Why do I forget the lessons of life? Why do I stand transfixed , amazed and stupefied by my own naivety? How many whips on the arse will be too many, finally?

What more will I take to internalize life's learnings.

embark, voyage, afresh

Scent of spring in the air

a sunny heart without a care

dopey eyes brimming with dreams

a shining face full of sheen

hope eternal in this heart afresh

wizened mind set on the road ahead

searching for my faraway land

a little serendipity &  a little slog

will see us through this eternal quest

unto the place, where the restless too shall finally rest